Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Mel Crawford Tom and Jerry

Kali was swell enough to scan her copy of this Mel Crawford cover so we could enjoy more detail. She also included this really appealing drawing of Ludwig Von Drake. I don't know who drew it. There's a great Goofy over there in the corner too.

I have many fond memories of Ludwig Von Drake from the old Wonderful world of color program. My grandparents had color TV before we did and we always had dinner at their house every Sunday. I'd race through my meal so I could get to the TV when they had cartoon night.

I always thought it was a little odd that Von Drake didn't talk like the other Ducks, but I came to see this as a positive. He's one of the few 'dialogue friendly' characters that Disney studios created (Jimminy Cricket is the other one)In that way he's a little closer to Warners' cartoon stars than their usual stuff.

If that birthday mascot doesn't have a name yet, I'd like to retract my earlier suggestion and name him Nummy Nutsack.

I'd forgotten about it, but just ran across mention of Ludwig on Wikipedia last night: Disney resisted putting his classic characters into television productions, as other studios were beginning to do, but he had Ludwig created specifically for television, to serve as MC for programs showing previous theatrically-released Disney work.

Wikipedia may be quoting what was the Disney company line about the creation of Von Drake. Peculiar how Disney chose to ridicule German scientist Werner Von Braun, a man they idolized in "Mars and Beyond" a few years before, then forced the recently demoted "Mars and Beyond" director Ward Kimball to animate Von Drake.

I never saw Von Drake as an attempt to make fun of Von Braun, at least not in any sort of malicious way. Crazy German scientist characters were pretty common in that era. Steve Allen had a similar character on his show that he would use for comedy interviews.